oing of
these itinerant apostles openly aimed at nothing less than the
establishment of a new Christian Commonwealth, or, as they termed it,
"the Kingdom of God on Earth."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] We are here, of course, dealing more especially with Germany; but
substantially the same course was followed in the development of
municipalities in other parts of Europe.

[2] _Einleitung_, pp. 255, 256.

[3] Cf. Von Maurer's _Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark-Verfassung_;
Gomme's _Village Communities_; Laveleye, _La Propriete Primitive_;
Stubbs's _Constitutional History_; also Maine's works.

[4] It should be remembered that Germany at this time was cut up into
feudal territorial divisions of all sizes, from the principality, or the
prince-bishopric, to the knightly manor. Every few miles, and sometimes
less, there was a fresh territory, a fresh lord, and a fresh
jurisdiction.

CHAPTER I

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT

The "great man" theory of history, formerly everywhere prevalent, and
even now common among non-historical persons, has long regarded the
Reformation as the purely personal work of the Augustine monk who was
its central figure. The fallacy of this conception is particularly
striking in the case of the Reformation. Not only was it preceded by
numerous sporadic outbursts of religious revivalism which sometimes
took the shape of opposition to the dominant form of Christianity,
though it is true they generally shaded off into mere movements of
independent Catholicism within the Church; but there were in addition
at least two distinct religious movements which led up to it, while
much which, under the reformers of the sixteenth century, appears as a
distinct and separate theology, is traceable in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries in the mystical movement connected with the names
of Meister Eckhart and Tauler. Meister Eckhart, whose free treatment
of Christian doctrines, in order to bring them into consonance with
his mystical theology, had drawn him into conflict with the Papacy,
undoubtedly influenced Luther through his disciple, Tauler, and
especially through the book which proceeded from the latter's school,
the _Deutsche Theologie_. It is, however, in the much more important
movement, which originated with Wyclif and extended to Central Europe
through Huss, that we must look for the more obvious influences
determining the course of religious development in Germany.

The Wyclifite movement in Engla